[ On Friday, September 15, 2000 at 14:45:26 (-0600), Herb Peyerl wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: BSD-Friendly Internet? 
>
> Just because the customer is always right doesn't mean the customer 
> isn't an idiot.

Once upon a time there was a sizable-then-but-tiny-now ISP here in
Toronto that explicitly told idiot customers to take a hike (and not
always kindly if I'm to believe the rumours ;-)

They felt (and I agree) that it's much better to send such customers
over to your competition than it is to keep them.  So long as this is a
conscious plan and not just the result of truly atrocious customer
support, the result should be (all other factors being equal) that your
competition ends up with a smaller profit margin after wasting extra
time and effort supporting these knobs.  It might even go so far as to
cause their support to become truly atrocious and eventually force them
out of business, in which case you'll get those hopefully now educated
users back!  :-)

(the reason the afore mentioned ISP is no longer sizable is because all
other factors were not equal in their case....)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>